


Awakenings

by Kazekaitou



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), I'm pretty sure if you ship these two and write fanfiction you have to write this scene, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Unnamed Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:15:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28810236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazekaitou/pseuds/Kazekaitou
Summary: End of 5.3 Waking up G'raha asleep in the tower fic“A fool’s dream realized.”The warmth of his chest, his strong beating heart solidified that fact for her.“Indeed.” His chin rested on her head as he calmed. “I never...I couldn’t…”She slipped out of hands, a few ilms back to look him in the eyes, and spoke with the intent she did when casting a spell. “It is okay to want, G’raha Tia.”
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	Awakenings

It was strange in a way, to look up at the tower in the skies of Mor Dohna, full of crystal planes and taste of bitter aether. The stark absence of the elegance of Crystarium, none of the ornate staircases, none of the forged power of a people brought to the brink of destruction and built up by a careful hand. The Scions had not dared to stop her as she turned her sights to the Crystal Tower, and back to him. She didn’t bother with a mount, taking the curving path memorized in her bones, where he had left her. She moved through the campsite of workers, past Saint Coinach's Find, past the felled stone guardians and the path that led to the door. Some had noticed her focus, but none dared ask or get in her way. 

The only pause in her journey was the golden stone from the sky, and she could not, did not spend much time contemplating its appearance, its marking or what it meant. Fate would force her mind to those things and now was not the time. There was too much to do, something to claim, something real and alive behind those impossible doors. The one that had left her just years ago when he’d disappeared inside. She’d tried, she’d begged those doors and it was unyielding to the warrior. It was a time when she had to learn to accept her powerlessness, that her will alone could not bend the universe, that her tears did not sway the destiny he had embraced. The one she fervently hoped he had defied. 

She held the white and red crystal in the palms of both of her hands, holding his blood, holding his soul in front of her like an offering to the looming blue gates, hands quaking, half afraid she would drop it to the ground. He’d entrusted her to this. At his death. At his beginning. 

He said she was his star, and yet he was the beacon of hope to an entire shard. He was a leader, a king, an Exarch. She was in his shadow, guided by his meticulous drive and what was left unspoken in his eyes when he looked at her, after her really.

The gates opened, unraveling the unknown mechanisms in gold on crystalline blue moved and she rushed inside not paying attention to the hallways now known to her.

She found him, laying on the blue floor of the Ocular, in the middle of patterns of the shards on the floor, laying in the center as if he were connecting them. A soft glow encircled him, most likely protecting him from the effects of time on his body.

She stepped closer, boots echoing off every surface, and he did not stir. She sat next to him, out of the touch of the soft blue light that illuminated him.

He laid on his side, loosely curled like a young kit, tail limp beside him. He wore nothing save soft burgundy shorts. There were no pillows, just one arm tucked under his head, the other near his nose holding something curled in long fingertips. 

She walked around to sit in front of him and took a moment in silence just to look. From how his red hair, unbraided, fanned against the blue floor, the rise and fall of his muscular chest, the v of his hips disappearing into dark red smalls, how his legs curled. Her hand touched reached out and touched the light, with no ill effect. He did not stir. 

She carefully pulled the piece of paper curled into one of his hands, it came loose easily in his sleep.

She unfolded it, looking at a rough sketch of herself, sitting next to a campfire with a smile on her face. She was looking up at someone, or something, it wasn’t clear. A profile sketch, looking like it was done in secret. 

It was the only thing in the ocular that indicated what was outside of these gates. And he’d chosen that to fall asleep with it, it almost looked as if he had gazed at it until he had drifted into the tower’s slumber. She sat back, looking up into the ceiling “G’raha Tia.” She whispered “I’d wish...I’d wish I’d  _ known _ back then.”

He’d been a scholar. Doe-eyed with acronyms and team spirit, undeterred in how words cannot express what comes from seeing first hand. Yet to learn that pain is impossible to translate from neurons to the brain and back to the page without something of the struggle lost. She had not seen his transformation on the first, by the time she arrived he was a force of will, unwilling to yield to the laws of magic, bending his way across time and worlds to save something he had lost. At the beginning of his journey, when they had first met, she had begun to see who he would become in the fleeting moments of the labyrinth, time moving so fast, the cloud of darkness and the knowledge bestowed upon him. The quiet resolve that marched into the gate without even a halting goodbye. 

She knew now he’d left before she could have asked him to stay. That He’d wanted to stay. Duty was a thing they both understood and faced unflinchingly. 

To wind here back on the floor of the ocular, the curled body of a mind yet to face harsh realities of a world sundered. He was of course, still. She wondered if she should wake him, without the memories. If he deserved an innocence, if only for a little while longer. But she knew it would be lost, and rediscovery could be so much worse in the end. After all his story thus far was one of long suffering but unsurpassed successes. Things he could hold onto. Victories.

She had known those to fall to never understand where their actions led. To never know the ends of the stories they were a part of. Who were names uttered on solemn days, graves marked and unmarked, unwritten tombs of actions in a long line of history lost. He deserved to see this world with the understanding of the things he had done, the footprints he had made, the lives he had changed.

She didn’t even have that, and she held his in her hands.

Before she could overthink, before she could reconsider the path he had forged, she placed the crystal in between his fingers and face almost as if he were breathing on it.

It began to glow. She watched aether, sparking light of memories, of himself float between the crystal and his heart, though its effect she could not know. 

She was afraid to touch him, as if it would contaminate the process, so she sat still in bated breath, waiting for a hundred years of life to find its way back to him, for the soft light around him to dim and fade away. For the tower to let go of what it had once claimed.

Eventually, his ruby eyes fluttered open staring into where the edges of her dark green caster’s robes hit the floor, and he shifted to look up at her and smiled. 

She wiped a tear from her eye, “Good morning.”

He shook his head, “I already cried about that once already, but thank you.” He said as he pulled himself up to sitting, looking at his arms and legs, flicking his tail behind him. “I seem…” He paused. 

The warrior watched the G’raha Tia’s face, thousands of emotions behind his eyes as he stared at the far wall to gather his thoughts, to try to articulate his feelings. His hands touched the ocular floor, dragging calloused archer’s fingers across the smooth blue plane, touching the edge of her robes from where he sat. Silently his red eyes scanned the room he’d known for a hundred years, before standing up and swaying, before his tail flicked out and he caught his own balance. 

He looked at his own legs, shifting between them, “Huh.”

He held out a friendly hand to where she sat. She took it, and he pulled her from sitting, hands holding for a moment too long, as his eyes followed a piece of paper that fell from her lap to the floor.

“What’s---” He started to ask, and she responded by picking it up and offering it to him. He unfolded it looking at the sketch, as he saw it was of her, the red flushed with embarrassment across his cheeks.

Words caught between the two of them a lifetime for him, years for her silencing weighing in on something unspoken, guarded, which had motivated so much. Words that had been carefully, painstakingly avoided.

“I’d forgotten I’d done such a thing.” He whispered, holding it not able to meet the eyes watching him, the soft face of understanding and compassion.

Fingers rose to move his hand down his eyes catching her mismatched green and orange. “There’s no need for mementos anymore. We’re right here.”

He took a step forward, pulling her into his bare chest. She could feel his chest move wracked with soundless sobs into her hair. Feel him hiding his face between her own ears and she had naught to do but hold him steady. She listened to his frantic heartbeat in his silence, felt how his splayed hands clutched at her firm and desperate. 

“You’re on the source. You made it.” She stated from where her head rested against his chest, “Your plan actually worked.”

“I… I didn’t know that it would. I couldn’t believe that I’d have any moments other than that I would become a part of the tower...that anything beyond that was just a fool’s dream.”

“A fool’s dream realized.” The warmth of his chest, his strong beating heart solidified that fact for her.

“Indeed.” His chin rested on her head as he calmed. “I never...I couldn’t…”

She slipped out of hands, a few ilms back to look him in the eyes, and spoke with the intent she did when casting a spell. “It is okay to want, G’raha Tia.”

Their breaths intermingled, lips connecting soft, warm, inviting- then he pulled away, his tail dropped, and he looked at his feet. His hand touched his own lips just briefly in silence for a moment before looking back up, tears forming at the edges of his eyes, “I...don’t want to presume...you have so much...you’re the warrior of light…” 

“You are the savior of the first. You are a  _ king _ . Who else? Why else? How could I not... _ notice you Raha, how could I not fall in love with you?”  _

He was wide-eyed again, mouth hung open, flustered, and before he could speak she took his hand in her own, her hands taking a moment to feel their strength before pressing it to her face, running her nose and cheek against it from fingertips to palm. He jumped back, tail almost puffed, startled and stuttering marked and stunned at the cultural expression he’d pretty much forgotten had existed. 

There was momentary silence, but she did not look away, “What- what do you feel G’raha Tia?”

He reached out to that stern face that was commanding him as much as it was asking him to manifest what was between them in words. His fingers trailed the soft fur of her ear, taking one ear and rubbing it just so, thumb memorizing the soft texture of short fur and soft skin. She purred under his touch, as he then traced her face to her lips, “Forgive me, for I scarce believe this is real.”

Impulsively, she took the edge of his finger into her mouth, dragging her teeth across the tip watching his face, his red eyes blown wide, breath hitched. After a moment she whispered into his fingertips “Have you ever dreamed of us together?” She watched him from over his hand, as he reddened and words caught in his throat and tears threatened to fall all at once, and suddenly whatever was holding him back broke in a way that he almost cried out in want. She did not see him close this distance between them, frantically kissing her lips- hands wandering, taking in the fill of strong curves as she moved with him, letting him lead as he pushed her against one of the walls of the tower with an audible thud.

“I have...” his voice was low, strained, caught in desire as kissed her cheek before dragging his face against hers, “always wanted you, always loved you, always needed you.” She moved her neck to the side for him to explore, while she pressed against him, clothed body against his nearly naked one. She felt him hard against her in a mere instant and shifted to provide just the smallest amount of friction.

It was as if his body startled himself, frozen for a second, so she took his hands to guide him to the clasps that kept her robes on, before sliding out of them and her undershirt with ease. His lips worshiped the expanse of her chest, finding a pert nipple just waiting to be enclosed in his mouth.

A high-pitched sound escaped her throat upon feeling his tongue; her body arched toward him, balancing herself against the wall of crystal. Helpless hands weaving themselves through his silken red hair, holding on with shuddering breaths before he switched his attentions trailing towards the other. She found herself gripping his back, fingertips dragging down his spine to find the base of his tail and following it up as far as she could from where he ravished her with his lips. 

He shuddered against her with a gasp, she could feel his knees weaken momentarily, before he caught his bearings in her skin, pushing himself against her in a way that pushed the breath out of her and made her dizzy with want.

He pulled back his face alight with concern, “It seems I do not know my own strength.”

“If I didn’t want to be pinned against the wall, I would not be.” She poked him on the nose and he scrunched his face in such an adorable way “G’raha, I want this. Don’t doubt it for a second, don’t  _ stop. _ ” She flashed her own grin before looking down at the space between them, where their hips met so little cloth between them. She traced her hands down his sides, feeling taught muscle underneath her fingertips, moving to the lines of his hips, that disappeared under cloth. Her hand hovered for a moment at the hem, dipping her hand to find his hardened length and he moaned into her shoulder, teeth scraping against skin, pushing himself against her.

She had barely started to stroke his length when his hand met her own, gently moving it away without a word between haggard breaths. He shifted his focus, his lips charted a course across supple skin leaving burning kisses in his wake. He moved his entire body lower, over the surprising softness of her stomach, to rest his forehead against her as he lowered himself to kneel on the floor.

“Ever the warrior bringing men to their knees.” He spoke into her smalls, the vibrations of his voice going through her before scarlet eyes met hers. Want surged in her smalls trying to reach lips so close. After a moment he flashed a coy grin of his own, “You are far too clothed.”

He yanked her pants and smalls down in one swoop, and they caught at the edge of her boots, she wiggled out of them on her own as his lips met the front of her thigh, followed by a lick of  her skin. Anticipation roared through her, the way he touched her caused her knees to quiver as he took his time, ilm by ilm, breathing at the defining lines of taut muscle under soft skin, enjoying how her hands gripped at his hair and she moaned for more substantial touch, hips canting towards his lips as he edged her legs farther apart with his thumbs. 

“Is this?” He was a mere moemnt away from her core and he looked up at her in a moment of trepidation.

She let out a low whine, as her hips bucked towards him and he moved back just enough, “Raha--” It was as much warning as it was a plea, and her hands found themselves caught in crimson hair.

Slick folds parted for his tongue, her own fantastical dream was in the process of transforming into a concrete reality. Her as knees began to go weak as she felt the lightly-rough texture of his tongue begin a pattern. She pulled him into her, her body telling her more, all the while she was unsure if she would be unable to stand. 

He pulled back, right before her fall over the edge, and he moved, arms lifting her up, her core resting against his stomach, just above his ready member. He paused to ask silently, and she nodded, legs wrapped around him his body tight, she was absolutely sure if he didn’t she would grind herself into oblivion on those abs. He guided himself, pushing up as she was filled.

He was holding her with enough pressure to probably mar the crystal behind them and she couldn’t care. She ached with want, her lips parted, breath coming out in pants. He watched her intently, ensuring she was unharmed, letting her shift and adjust to him. And then he let go, his pace stepping up so fast, so quickly pounding into her. She could only hold on, cling as she felt the ache of want to build and crash eventually into him until he let go inside of her shuddering, crying out to the sky. 

Only then did they pause, their worlds collided and realigned, desire quelled and battles won. 

They moved to part, he carefully lowered her onto shaky legs.

After a long moment, he said, “I believe this is the best welcome home I could have wished for.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come join us at e [ Book Club ](https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic) to chat with and get support from FFXIV fanfic writers. Thanks to the discord for supporting my snippets and being all-around lovely people. Thanks to TRP and smokingbomber for listening to my rambles and frustration with this.


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